1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to content navigation, and more particularly, systems and methods for navigating a collection of editorial content.
2. Copyright Notice
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
3. Description of Related Art
The Internet has become a primary source of communication amongst millions of individuals in recent years. Web pages are accessed by individuals for nearly every reason under the sun, ranging from education and information exchange, to on-demand entertainment and online dating. The Internet has become particularly prevalent in the advertising, marketing, and retail sectors as a go-to source for widespread, and relatively successful, dissemination of brand information. As a result, more and more businesses have turned to the internet to draw potential consumers, educate the public about their brands, services, and goods, and to act as an always-open marketplace for their products. Although quite beneficial for deal-seeking consumers, the rapid influx of businesses to the internet has saturated many market segments, resulting in fierce competition between similarly-situated companies.
In order to differentiate themselves from competitors and to provide a measure of confidence about the product being considered for purchase, companies often rely on editorial content describing, evaluating, and providing insight into the their products, which can be any tangible or intangible goods or services. Editorial content in this context is usually authored and published by a user of the product. In the case of product reviews, the author is usually (a) a personal consumer of the product or (b) an organizational consumer of the product.
A personal consumer of a product is someone who purchases the product in the regular marketplace for his or her own consumption. Personal consumers come from a wide variety of educational and experiential backgrounds, but almost all acquire, use, and evaluate the product under the normal conditions for which the product was designed. Thus, reviews authored by personal consumers may only consider basic factors, such as merchantability, fitness for a particular or intended purpose, and sensory-acquired features (e.g., design, color, size, weight, smell, texture, taste, sound, etc.). Personal consumers continue to use the product as long as it is functional, optimal, and/or desirable, potentially over the lifetime over the product. Thus, a review from a personal consumer may take into consideration the product's long-term wear and tear, performance, and reliability.
An organizational consumer of the product, such as an agency, business, firm, or representative thereof, purchases a product for business-related purpose or in furtherance of a business-related objective. An example of a business related purpose may include, for example, paper supplies to be used to maintain the business's offices. For the purpose of this application, an organizational consumer may also be a business (or representative of a business) that acquires another business's product for the sole purpose of evaluating it.
This particular type of consumer, commonly referred to as a “product tester”, may purchase the product, in the marketplace or at wholesale, for the primary purpose of reviewing it. More typically, however, a product tester will acquire the product free of charge from the product's manufacturer. In return, the product tester uses the product to formulate reviews that publicize the user's experience with the product, and thus the product itself. Some product testers are paid by the manufacturer either for or based on their review. In this situation, the opinion and review of the product tester may be skewed favorably toward the product being tested and/or away from competitor products being tested for which they are not being compensated.
Product testers are often relied on to provide an “expert opinion” of the product being evaluated, based on their knowledge and experience with that type of product. Thus, product testers may evaluate the product with higher expectations, considering a breadth of general factors, such as those considered by personal consumers, specific factors that may be advanced or uncommon, and potential design flaws or manufacturing defects. In addition, due to their experience, product testers can consider the product's quality relative to competitor products in their evaluation. However, due to the specialized knowledge required to formulate these reviews, only a very limited number of expert opinions may be available, and are assembled slowly and infrequently in comparison to reviews from personal consumers.
In some cases, product testers receive the product from the manufacturer prior to its widespread release. Reviews published prior to the release of a product may further the advertising objectives of the manufacturer by creating “hype” surrounding the product (and increasing demand for the product) before it is even available. Pre-release reviews may also help potential personal consumers make a purchasing decision about the product, whereas they would otherwise have to purchase the product “blindly”, or without basis for confidence that the product is desirable. However, pre-release products are usually given to product testers only weeks, if not days, in advance of the product's release date. Additionally, for all products, testers often want to publish their reviews as quickly as possible. Prompt publication of useful reviews for new products sets a reviews website apart from lagging competitors, creating hype for the website, establishing it as a “go to” source of expert opinions, and generating increased website traffic, all of which potentially increase advertising revenue and the profitability of the website. However, urgent publication deadlines lessen the time the tester has to evaluate the product, eliminating the tester's ability to consider its long-term performance. This is often resolved by the product tester at a later date by adding a second review solely considering long-term performance, or by updating the previous view with long-term results.
Because of the disadvantages inherent in each, potential consumers of a product prefer to consider both reviews authored by personal consumers and those authored by product testers, in order to consider a wide variety of performance data, view points and opinions for a given product. In addition, potential consumers often want to compare multiple reviews written by the same or a similar group of consumers for competing products, in order to establish baseline expectations for that type of product.
However, many conventional review websites require that a user search for different product models individually, then toggle or navigate back and forth between the reviews. This presents particular for potential consumers that are not intimately familiar with the product or product type, as they likely would not know the names and models of competing products offhand. Other conventional sites allow a user to display all products within a particular category, but provide little guidance as to which of the displayed products are most similar to a selected product. Even if users are aware of comparable products, they must individually select each product, then again toggle or navigate back and forth between reviews.
Some sites attempt to remedy this by offering a comparison feature that allows for side-by-side comparison of products within a category using a matrix. However, a user must first determine which products he or she wishes to compare, which can be tedious and time-consuming for a user that does not readily know which competing products are most similar to a given product. Furthermore, if a large number of products are selected, a sizeable matrix is created that is either jammed into a single page for display, or broken up into multiple pages, which again requires toggling and navigation between different products. Results delivered in this fashion are limited to those individual products that were selected by the user; thus, comparable products unknown to a user are not included or brought to the user's attention for consideration. Further, even if additional products are later identified as comparable by the user, they cannot be added to the comparison without running a new search.